Stop and smell the butterflies

Morning!  And how is life treating you today?

Over here in LingLand, I’ve decided that being healthy is a Very Good Thing indeed.  Having experienced the joys of food poisoning on Thursday and a virus yesterday, I can honestly tell you – I’ve had enough character-building in that general direction, thank you very much!  Hopefully this week will be, ahem, filled with more vim and vigor compared to blah and bovineness. 

But I digress. 

Today’s post deals with how the most unique and precious of life’s little moments can profoundly affect  how you choose to live the rest of your existence.  I came across it from the Book of Joe, who reprinted the below story from the Washington Post.  Here’s the beginning – I urge you to click thru on the above links, read the entire story and then return here.

….IN JULY LAST YEAR, a butterfly landed on my shoulder while I was taking a break from my office for a few minutes one afternoon to talk business with a colleague. I was sure the butterfly would soon fly off. We were walking through an L Street canyon near 19th Street NW that was surrounded by granite, concrete and glass. I had never seen a butterfly in this part of the city before. Now I had one clinging to me. It migrated to my shirt collar and stayed there.

After half an hour or so, with my new friend still perched on me, I decided that I should have a picture taken to record the butterfly’s remarkable arrival out of nowhere. So together we ducked into a MotoPhoto shop on 19th Street, just north of L.

The gentleman running the photo shop seemed to find nothing unusual about a man walking around with a butterfly on his collar and began clicking away with his camera. I thought that his flash would scare the butterfly away, but my little pal stayed put.

I decided to get the butterfly something to eat at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse across the street. My colleague Catherine Antoine and I plunged into the rush-hour traffic on 19th, slipping between cars that were jammed together waiting for the light to change. Neither the noise nor the fumes seemed to bother the butterfly.

I asked the waiter standing outside the door of the steakhouse to find a corner table for "me, my colleague and the butterfly."

"Right away, sir," responded the waiter, acting as if there was nothing extraordinary about a butterfly dropping in at a steakhouse. We ordered calamari and two glasses of pinot noir, and I asked the waiter to get something for the butterfly……MORE…..

Have you finished reading the entire article yet?  No?  Okay, click above and enjoy…I’ll wait for you here.

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Ah, you’re back!  Admit it – wasn’t that one of the most intriguing and ‘feel-good’ unlikely stories you’ve read this year? 

Hmmm?

It really made me sit up and think!  How about you?  What went thru your mind when you were reading about the unlikely experiences the gentlemen encountered?  Me, well….I was remembering all of those special crystalized memory flashes that have been etched in my mind, all while growing up…..

• The time I was convinced I saw a lion in the woods  …. (turned out to be a jumble of tree trunks, but wow, I sure stood stock-still for 15 minutes until I determined that…)
• The time I led a police horse back to the officer at the zoo….(long story)
• The time that I spent comforting my daughter who was angsting over her former best friends who were trying to manipulate her….
• The time I picked up my eldest at preschool, and she proudly introduced me to her teacher with, that’s my mom – she’s teaching me the way of math….
• The time my boyfriend (now husband) and I spent at the Labs facility on a Saturday, him writing the software code and me building the applications….
• The time I spent 4 months ago crying in the car after choosing to allow fear to overwhelm me at karate sparring…
• The time I spent at my daughter’s class on Mother’s Day, opening up her 20 page Mother’s Day book she had personally created (and then crying in front of her classmates)
• The time I came across my youngest ripping up books to "make party placemats for all of his animal friends" and seeing how proud he was of his ideas….(and then joining him in his make-believe party)….

In all of the above cases and thousands more, the incidents were generally brief and fleeting moments….but the lessons learned AFTERWARDS have remained with me to this day.  They include:

• When encountering the unexpected….don’t panic, just evaluate.
• If you want to do something, go ask! 
• I can’t protect my children from the pains of growing up…but I CAN witness her journey and provide a sturdy shoulder.
• There’s no limit to what I can teach my kids.
• Romance is found in the most unique of places!
• Choosing fear is one possibility….choosing to deal with it is another entirely.
• Crying in front of anyone is okay.
• Children see wonders in the most, ahem, unique of situations.

Sometimes our guardian angels just plunk down extraordinary happenings on top of our heads like the butterfly of the original article…and sometimes they grab us and shake us with brief flashes of beauty in the most common of actions.

It’s up to us, however, to be alert to these life-changing moments and embrace them with enthusiasm and joy.

Remember…the knowledge gained from lessons you choose to learn today might someday in the future….be the difference between success and failure and happiness and agony. 

The choice is yours!  Make certain you choose wisely.

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling

ps – speaking of butterflies:

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